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Seven weeks of living out in the watery wilderness has come to an end…

We’ve chugged up and down this lovely little river, moored at various middle of nowhere locations, walked the towpath and discovered the footpaths through the adjacent park and got to know the regular dog walkers and runners.

We’ve heard and seen all sorts of wildlife, some – scarily – on board…

The web of a funnel web spider in Hobo’s engine room!

A more conventional outdoor web…

A toad on the towpath…

Mother and chicks…

Cows…

All of these will benefit from zooming in.

There was a snake on the towpath on one of my walks but it was far faster than me, slithering into the safety of the long grass before I could even think about grabbing the camera.

No amount of zooming will help here. Another of many of my marvellous pics that got away.

John calls this Queen Anne’s lace…

But has always been keck to me.

It (and the nettles) has grown madly while we’ve been out. Hobo was visible from way back at one spot but completely hidden a few weeks later – at first scaring the hell out of me, thinking she’d gone on without me!

We’ve even carried out some exterior boat maintenance.

Before…

After…

It’s far from finished but I’m happy with the story so far. Making a start, as always, was the hardest part. The rest I can do in bite-size pieces – as and when – starting with the hand rails I think.

Now I’m all for a bit of serendipity and synchronicity, and my next little tale is certainly a bit of both. John got chatting to a dog walker one day who introduced herself as a cat magnet. Knowing I was hankering after a feline friend, he called me to come talk to her. She’s involved with re-homing rescue dogs and cats and said she’d keep me in mind.

That very evening we had a visitor…

She was very hungry and, after wolfing down a can of tuna, became very affectionate and soon made herself at home…

Do click on any image to big it up.

She helped me with the writing…

Making the bed…

A bit twitchy at times…

But mostly quite content…

She slept at the bottom of the bed every night, waking me by pummelling my stomach and head-butting me at an ungodly hour each morning to be let out.

She spent the day playing in the woods…

Returning intermittently to feed – and I think to check we were still there. We speculated as to where she’d come from. She seemed very au fait with boat life – had she jumped ship? But surely her human would be looking for her – but no evidence of this: lost kitty posters, concerned person calling her name. Nothing.

I messaged the “cat magnet” but it was not her doing. A puzzle.

And a dilemma. It seemed wrong to leave her when we left and wrong to take her with us. Such a gorgeous creature…

The cat – just in case you were wondering!

As ever, doing nothing proved to be the best plan. One day, a chappie pitched up looking for her. He’d been moored nearby and noticed she was missing when he’d moved his boat further downstream. We told him we’d met her and said she’d be in the woods so he called her but to no avail.

I then called out “come on then”, she appeared from nowhere, avoided her human and jumped aboard Hobo! It was like she had made a choice. Well they do say cats choose their owners. Of course, I had to let her go. It was heart-breaking!

But that’s not the end to this story. John walked down the towpath that night and saw her on the roof of “her” boat…

It wasn’t until he arrived back at Hobo that we realised she had followed him. It was quite a way and in the dark. Unbelievable!

Kitty-cat moved in with us again. Double dilemma – now that we knew where she belonged. Again, any decisions were taken out of our hands, she was collected once more and her boat moved further away. I am resigned to never seeing her again but live in hope that the “cat magnet” will come up trumps and find me one of my own. Till then though, I miss her. Every day.

And so, all good things have come to an end. John’s gone, cat’s gone, I am back on my mooring and looking forward to the next time. Maybe in the autumn.

But I have lovely memories of a lovely time, lovely little trip, lovely company and lots of lovely photos.